Tom Brennan Textual Analysis

This powerful characteristic that transitional phases possess have the potential to be a rewarding experience, as they provide an individual with the opportunity for growth and knowledge development through newfound relationships. In ‘The Story of Tom Brennan’, Tom exhibits this through his bond with Chrissy following the dark trauma he endures caused by his brother Daniel. Initially, Tom feels detached from his own identity as he refers to himself in third person “I missed…simple Tom Brennan”, emphasising his deteriorated mental state. However, the relationship he forms with Chrissy is instrumental in his recovery as he begins to find himself again. His passionate tone in “Today I kissed Chrissy Tulake, I felt like Tom Brennan” epitomizes how this bond empowers him to assert a stronger sense of personal identity. Burke, therefore, is able to reveal how transitional

‘Saturday the 27th of August’ was the day Tom Brennan’s life changed forever. The Story of Tom Brennan is written by J.C. Burke with the story centred on teenager Tom Brennan and how his brother, Daniel, made the Brennan family the most hated people in Mumbilli. The Brennan’s were then forced to move to a new town, Coghill, where they knew no one but Gran, Tom’s grandmother. Daniel had been a heavy drinker and one night he had way too many but yet still decided to get into his car, leading to an accident and therefore the death of two mates and leaving another a quadriplegic. The themes of growing

Intro: J.C Burkes novel, ‘The Story Of Tom Brennan’ starts with a fatal car accident. Daniel Brennan a young driver who’s had to much to drink, makes a bad decision, and drives while intoxicated, with three other people in the car, in an instant his friends are dead, and his cousin Fin is left with permanent spinal injuries. This book shows us how Tom Brennan’s life changes when his older brother, Daniel, kills two people and paralyses another.

In ‘The Story of Tom Brennan’, the protagonist confronts a traumatic incident which compels him to undergo a physical relocation and sudden emotional change. The transition Tom predominantly faces is sudden as moving into the town of Coghill where he has to deal with social alienation and the horrific trauma inflicted through past events including Daniel’s anger and selfishness which hinders his physical and mentally growth and development. Tom experiences flashbacks of the ‘usual’ Australia Day with his family showing the complete paradox with what is now their reality and horror juxtaposed towards his flashback of the tragic accident of his older brother Daniel: “Running towards the car. Running into the headlights. Running into the silence of death.” The anaphora and repetition of ‘running’ highlights his emotional and physical devastation which emphasises the initial stages of the novel and negative connotations of ‘death’ assumes the setting. As a result of the crisis, Tom responds rather opposing towards transferring to a new setting of Coghill. Depressing motifs are frequently implied throughout the novel to express the feeling of despair and sadness: “There aren’t words to say how black and empty pain felt. It was deeper than the

The experience of moving into the world can challenge individuals attitudes and beliefs. Into the world explores the aspects of growth, transition and change. The novel ' The Story of Tom Brennan' by J.C Burke explores the different ways individuals grow when they are taken out of their comfort zones and venture into new experiences. This concept is also conveyed within the song 'Fast Car' By Tracy Chapman and the film 'Charlie st Cloud' Directed by Burr Steers. 'The Story of Tom Brennan' follows the lives of the Brennan family after the events of a fatal car accident, it shows how Tom the protagonist struggles to cope with his past, similarly the song 'Fast Car' is a representation of an escape, a women seeking to flee a life she finds

Individuals respond in various ways to transitioning into a new phase of life and society, these transitions can be challenging and confronting. They can also be transformative and thus some individuals accept and others reject because it’ll often initiate a series of consequences that may accelerate one’s personal growth and involuntarily change one’s perspective and/or attitude. These ideas are manifested in J.C Burke’s, ‘The story of Tom Brennan,' a move about the transitions that characters face after an indelible accident. In correspondence to the short story, ‘Neighbours’ by Tim Winton and is about a young couple moving from the city to the village and finding it difficult to reside with the European migrants.

The novel describes the journey of the protagonist Tom Brennan as he struggles to overcome a car accident caused by his brother, Daniel. Which left his cousin Fin quadriplegic, killed two friends and caused Tom's family to move from Mumbilli to Coghill. Tom’s view towards certain topics are challenged as he aims to move on from the past. This mainly includes issues about his family and hobbies. Burke uses 1st person and repetition in “maybe after Daniel had done his time we could go back: maybe not “to show how such a move has affected Tom. This also shows him questioning his optimistic personality before the accident and how the change has challenged his belief that his family will be

Daniel Brennan is the main character of the story,' Tom Brennan'. He plays an 18 year old son, who makes a decision that completely ruins his life and his reputation. Before the accident, Daniel had the dream life any teenage boy could ever want. He was five-eight and his brother Tom was half-back, they worked as a team. All that is over now.

Throughout the novel “The Story Of Tom Brennan” Burke cleverly employs an enormous amount of changes as a result of one tragic event. The event involves

Teenage years are, without argument, the most confusing and difficult years of a person’s life as they

Richard Van Camp's, The Lesser Blessed, contains elements that classify the novel with both Indigenous and Modern genres. Featuring both genres in a text can lead to contradicting themes that form a binary. This binary has the potential to limit the extent readers can connect to the story, suggesting the presence of a barrier. Barriers hinder the readers' lack of understanding or relatability to either Indigenous or Modern works of literature. This paper will serve to analyze how Richard Van Camp deconstructs the binary by having the sides work together rather than against one another. Furthermore, this paper will discuss how by breaking down the binary, Richard Van Camp is allowing his novel to be accessible to all readers.

In western Australian author Tim Winton’s book, The Turning, the large collection of short stories are aimed towards teenagers and other people who have been teenagers. This is so, because each story uses a similar theme to do with finishing high school, how people decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives and the character’s journeys along the way.

The novel ’The Story of Tom Brennan’ by J.C. Burke, focuses on a devastating car accident in a small town, caused by one character who was drink driving. This one event has an extreme effect on a family, who struggle to come to grips with the situation. Tom and Kylie struggle to begin their new life at their Gran’s place in Coghill, after moving there from their home in the small town of Mumbilli. In Coghill, Tom and Kylie also start at St. Benedict's where they react so differently to the same scenario. The author J.C. Burke used emotive and descriptive dialogue, first person narration and symbolism to demonstrate just how differently people can react to the same situation.

In his novel, The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck theorized the concept of psychological maps of a person’s reality. Based off of the principal of cognitive biases, Peck states that a person creates numerous ‘maps’ throughout their life to organize information and make sense of the world. Cognitive biases and Peck’s maps profoundly affect the way we perceive the world and ourselves. By creating ‘maps’ in a person’s psyche, these biases dictate the ways people interact with various situations. ‘Life is difficult’ is the first line of The Road Less Traveled, and it holds true. The multitude of maps a person creates throughout the course of their lives heavily influence how they deal with different conflicts.

This essay presents a comparative analysis of two research texts: “Pathways and transitions, Post-16 (Ball et al 2000)” and “Boys, Girls, and Achievement: Addressing the Classroom Issues. (Francis, B 2000.)”. The two research texts are analysed by highlighting the sorts of social theory that have been applied and developed in them, and how they ‘lighten what we perceive and experience’ in our early years, families, career lives, identity tussles and political orientations.